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Tom DeWeese

In 2006, I was surprised to find myself sitting at a formal dinner in the middle of a 200-year-old debating society at Cambridge University in England. In a few minutes I, and five others were about to engage in a debate over the usefulness of the United Nations. But here, for a few minutes longer, at the long dinner table with the crisp, white tablecloth, I was sitting next to one of my fellow debaters, Salis Shetty, the head of the UN’s Millennium Project.

I had ignored him through most of the dinner, but with just a few minutes left before the debate I finally turned to him and said, “You realize you don’t have a prayer, don’t you?”

He looked at me and asked, “About what?”

I replied, “Ending poverty by 2015 through the use of redistribution of wealth.” (That was one of the eight listed goals of the UN’s Millennium Project, accepted by world leaders in 2000.)

He said, “Yes, I know.”

I began to talk with him about the need to help the poor escape from poverty on their own rather than being condemned to life-long bread lines. I talked about the need to establish private property rights as a means to build wealth. I mentioned that there was estimated to be almost $10 trillion in “dead capital”(property in the world that no one is allowed to own or invest in). That’s enough capital to help a lot of poor people break out of their dire situation.

Mr. Shetty looked at me as I made these observations and said, “Hernando de Soto.”

“Yes!” That’s exactly whom I was quoting. De Soto is an economist from Peru who has made it his life’s work to help end poverty in the world by promoting private property ownership.

To my amazement Mr. Shetty looked at me and said, “I have associates who are looking on this (de Soto’s ideas) favorably.” Just as he said those words, the call came for us to head to the debating hall for our event. Of course we were on opposite sides.

As soon as the debate was over (I was outnumbered five to one, as usual) I made a beeline to Mr. Shetty and said, “You and I started a conversation and I want to finish it.” A few weeks later I traveled to New York City to meet with him in his UN office. During that meeting, he told me that, in his city in India, the local government was beginning to go over property records and officially register ownership, something that had never been done before. The result was that the economy of the community was starting to improve.

That is exactly the point that Hernando de Soto is making as he travels the world meeting with national leaders. The core reason for poverty is bad government. In most of the world, people may “own” their homes, perhaps via an underground economy, but they have no official records through the government to prove it. Without that official proof or registration, they have no means to use the property for equity loans and investment, so it is essentially dead capital, as de Soto has labeled it.

In his book, “The Mystery of Capital, Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else,” de Soto explains the major difference between the American system and most other nations of the world. Here, every single piece of privately held property — homes, even large equipment, is registered. In fact, the County Registrar’s office is one of the most important tools of freedom because it’s where every American can prove ownership of their property. Because of that system, average Americans can use their property as a tool to obtain loans. At least 60% of American companies have been started thorough equity loans on private property. And those privately held companies went on to employ about 60% of the American workforce. That is how private property ownership made the United States the richest nation in the world, almost over night. Lack of such a system is the reason much of the rest of the world fell into extreme poverty. In those cases the people have no way out of poverty and are forced to rely on government handouts.

De Soto’s book was called “The blueprint for a new industrial revolution,” by the Times of London. Today de Soto travels the world, meeting with world leaders who seek his guidance on how they can end poverty in their nations. Yet, when he tells them the secret is private ownership of property, many balk, telling him with a troubled smile, that the people in their nations “just aren’t ready for such a policy – they don’t understand the concept of private property ownership.” So the promise of a great new financial revolution that could spread wealth and freedom to every corner of the world never gets off the ground.

A few years ago I had the great privilege of a private meeting with Hernando de Soto. He told me a story of one such meeting he had with a national leader. He’s been in enough meetings with world leaders that he can now almost anticipate what they are going to say. In this particular meeting, he said he knew the leader was going to tell him that his people just weren’t ready for private property ownership. So, before the meeting, de Soto sent a team into the neighborhood around the presidential palace and knocked on doors to ask the people if they owned their homes. Every single one of them said yes, they owned their home. So de Soto’s team members asked each to produce any kind of evidence they might have to show that ownership. They did. It might have been a bill of sale, a receipt or even a copy of a will. In any case, they had something to prove their ownership in a country where property ownership was not supported by the government.

De Soto took copies of these items with him to the meeting, and before the discussion could begin about how the people of his country didn’t understand private property ownership, Hernando de Soto spread his evidence on the table and said to the leader, “your people understand property ownership, now let’s discuss how they can legally own it and build capital from it.”

There are three main reasons the world has not experienced de Soto’s new financial revolution. First is bad government led by dictators who refuse to give up their power over the people by supplying them the means for ending poverty. Poverty is very helpful to dictators because poor people are powerless to rise up against them. Poverty is also convenient to rouse the rabble against political opponents and spread fear.

Those who are barely hanging on from meal to meal are easy to scare with threats from any proposal that dares to differ from the redistribution schemes, even if, in the long run, that would be the best means for them to find a way out of poverty. The Left has used this fear effectively to build hate and resistance against those who promote free enterprise.

The second reason the world is sinking into ever greater poverty is the Environmental movement- the new-style dictatorship that actually prefers people to remain poor, living in mud huts with no infrastructure, running water or electricity. That, they claim, is sustainable.

Believe it or not, there is a worldwide Sustainable Development policy to prohibit funding of development projects in Third World countries if the projects don’t fit the environmental agenda. It’s called the Equator Principles. According to their own documents, the Equator Principles were established in association with the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation in 2003. They have been adopted by at least 73 financial institutions around the world, covering over 70% of international projects such as dams, mines, and pipelines. At least three leading American financial institutions are associates of the Equator Principles, including Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup.

In short, such policy actually leads to what can only be called Environmental Racism. A few white, rich people who live in luxury in their first-world nations have made a determination that some who now live in mud huts with no indoor power and no clean running water, must stay that way because these elites have determined it is more ‘sustainable” for the planet.

Stopping development for the poor has become a major drive by Sustainablists. At the Earth Summit in 1992, Chairman Maurice Strong famously said “Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrial nations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” Zero economic growth is the announced goal to assure their well-ordered sustainable society stays dormant, thereby assuring their control. Of course, the result will only be more poor people – all in the name of saving the environment.

But fear not, these same power mongers aren’t satisfied to condemn just those already living in poverty. Apparently they are so determined to control every human action on the planet that they are equally happy to condemn the rest of us to such a future – for the planet, of course. Author Ted Trainer has written a book entitled “Transition to a Sustainable and Just World,” which is really nothing more than a blueprint for establishing Marxist principles into your local community. In the book Trainer writes, “The alternative has to be the simpler way, a society based on non-affluent lifestyles within mostly small and highly self-sufficient local economies under the local participatory control and not driven by market forces or the profit motive, and with no economic growth. There must be an enormous cultural change away from competitive individualistic acquisitiveness.” The call for zero economic growth was also heard at the UN’s Rio+20 Summit in 2012. Trainer’s motto for us all is that “you must live on less!” That is their definition of Sustainable Development. Of course they only mean this future for you and me, not the powerful elite.

Such ideas of destroying human civilization are, in fact, rampant throughout the Green movement. Paul Ehrlich, professor of Population Studies at Stanford University demanded that “a massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation.” Apparently, the advocates of such a desire to make us all poor have missed a very important fact. Only in wealthy nations do people have enough money and time to worry about protecting the environment. The poor worry only about one thing – survival. It is also in the poorest areas where population numbers explode. In rich, secure nations populations are actually going down. So it would seem logical that if one wants to protect the environment and reduce populations then Capitalism would be the economic system of choice. But of course, none of this is really about helping the poor or the ecology. It’s about power.

The third reason for depressed economies and a growing number of poor is what I call the “Compassion Cartel.” Government, private charities and foundations have made poverty big business. It’s the excuse for nearly every governmental spending program. Help the poor! Tax the rich! How dare they get wealthy while others suffer? And the preferred way to eliminate poverty is redistribution of wealth. It’s easy to convince someone to donate to a cause when emotions and guilt are employed. Reason and rational thought take a backseat.

Back to my debate in Cambridge: After the debate was over, the hosts sponsored a reception. As I entered the door, I was confronted by one of the students, who asked with puzzlement – “sir, you really don’t believe in redistribution of wealth?”

I answered, “No, it’s theft.”

And she said, “But if you have more than you need, shouldn’t you share it with someone who needs it?”

I said, “Why should I?”

She looked like I had slapped her. Here she was, one of the bright young students at one of the great schools in the world, and she had never heard an argument against redistribution of wealth or for a free market. As I spoke to her, giving detail after detail about how a free market and property can eliminate poverty, more than 50 other students began to gather around.

I explained that if I take money from each of them today to feed someone more unfortunate, then tomorrow they will need another meal –and again the next day, and the next. You have gained nothing in the battle to help them, other than to delay their agony another day. At best you have offered a band aid. At worse, such policy doesn’t prevent poverty. Something else is causing that poverty and you haven’t addressed it. So, tomorrow there will be more poor, and more the next. And each time you will be forced to provide more and more aid from your now dwindling funds, until one day you too may find yourself forced to be in the receiving line. When I finished my explanation there was a moment of silence and then the young student said, “What an interesting point of view. How can I learn more?”

I wanted to scream “Economics 101!”

Today, anyone who points out such economic facts in a failed welfare system is called heartless and probably racist. What kind of evil person calls helping the poor theft? Well, take a good look at the world we live in. According to Mr. Shetty’s Millennium Project, there are currently 1.2 billion people living in poverty. Fifty thousand deaths a day occur worldwide as a result of poverty. Every year more than 10 million children die of hunger and preventable diseases. More than half the world’s population lives on less that $2 per day and 800 million people go to bed hungry every night.

To combat all of this we have the Compassion Cartel. We have thousands of charitable organizations and faith-based programs designed to feed the children, along with education programs designed to create awareness of poverty and starvation. Their ads run on television nightly pulling at our heartstrings to “do something.” Most of these charities have built huge private organizations, with highly paid administrators working out of impressive buildings with large staffs. That doesn’t include the huge government programs operating at an even larger scale on your tax dollars. As I said, poverty is big business.

Every politician preaches the gospel of helping the poor and as a result, more than half of every American’s pay check disappears into government coffers even before it hits our own pockets. Billions of dollars of aid pour into federal and international programs to distribute to countries around the world to help feed the poor. Poverty reductions have been set. Goals have been announced, Deadlines for ending poverty have been determined and every national and international leader has signed documents to pledge that poverty must be eradicated. In 2015 it was called Agenda 2030. In 2019 it’s called the Green New Deal.

What is the result of this worldwide focus on poverty? Well, we have more poor! It’s a growth industry. Why? Because not one of these programs offers a single plan to allow the poor to help themselves. Instead, the Compassion Cartel has sentenced every single poor person in the world to a future of life-long breadlines, allowing them to be victims of demagogues, con artists and harsh, hopeless, futureless lives. There is no consideration for their goals and dreams and no real understanding of the hopelessness of their lives. And the middle class of once wealthy nations like the United States is quickly dissolving under the burden of the redistribution schemes. Result – more poor in our once proud nation.

If the self-proclaimed compassion industry had true concern for the poor, it would begin an international drive to empower the poor by allowing them to build their own wealth – thereby getting themselves off of the breadlines.

Hernando de Soto has offered that way. He has called for the establishment of private property rights that would allow people around the world to build personal wealth and the ability to invest in new enterprises that would, in return, employ more, help build infrastructure to allow still more to have electricity, heat, cooling and clean water in their homes, improving health and the quality of their lives. Step by step these improvements would lead to creating more wealth worldwide, reducing the burden on the rest of us, and in turn, help all of us build even more wealth, strengthening quality of life. Help the poor help themselves and it will also help you. That is a winning compassion for all.

But to take such a step would require a rejection of socialism and an embracing of capitalism. And that, says the Compassion Cartel, can never be allowed, because that would lead to empowering individuals to control their own lives. Instead, in the name of compassion, sustainable oppression in a well-ordered society is so much more efficient.

Like this:

The American beef industry has long been a tasty target of the environmentalists and their allies in the animal rights movement. To understand the reason is to know that protecting the environment is not the goal, rather the excuse in a determined drive for global power. Their selected tactic is to control the land, water, energy, and population of the Earth. To achieve these ends requires, among other things, the destruction of private property rights and elimination of every individual’s ability to make personal lifestyle choices, including personal diet.

Of course, no totalitarian-bound movement would ever put their purpose in such direct terms. That’s where the environmental protection excuse comes in. Instead, American cattle producers are simply assured that no one wants to harm their industry, just make it safer for the environment. The gun industry might recognize that such assurance sounds a bit familiar. Same source, same tactics, same goals.

So the offered solution to “fix” the beef industry is “sustainable certification”. All the cattle growers have to do, they are assured, is follow a few simple rules and all will be fine, peaceful and profitable. Enter the players: the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef (GRSB), and the U.S, Department of Agriculture.

First, let’s reveal the Sustainablists’ stated problems with the beef industry. What’s not sustainable about raising beef? According to the environmental “experts”, there are ten reasons why the meat industry does not meet sustainable standards:

Deforestation – the claim is that farm animals require considerably more land than crops to produce food. The World Hunger Program calculated that if the land was used to grow grain and soy instead of cattle the land could provide a vegan diet to 6 billion people. Do you get that – a vegan diet! The fact is, most grazing land in the U.S. cannot be used for growing food crops because the soil wouldn’t sustain crops.

Fresh Water – they claim that the America diet requires 4,200 gallons of water per day, including animal drinking water, irrigation of crops, processing, washing, etc. Whereas a vegan diet only requires 300 gallons per day. Apparently they don’t plan to irrigate the land to grow wheat or to wash the vegetables.

Waste Disposal – factory farms house hundreds of thousands of animals that produce waste. They claim these giant livestock farms produce more than 130 times the amount of waste humans do. The interesting thing about this detail is that the actual sustainable policies they are enforcing to fix this problem destroy the small family farms in favor of the very giant corporate factory farms they profess to oppose. In addition, those global corporations which join the Green cabal have the ability to ignore many of the “sustainable” restrictions, unlike the small, family farms that are much better at protecting the environment on their own.

Energy Consumption – For the steak to end up on your plate, say the Greens, the cow has to consume massive amounts of energy along the way as the cattle are transported thousands of miles to slaughter, market, and refrigerate. And let’s not forget, the meat must then be cooked! Well this transportation argument is a direct result of the existence of a limited few packing companies in cahoots with the Green Lords that dictate the market as they work against a more decentralized, local industry. Meanwhile, last time I checked, Tofurkey – made from soy — also has to be cooked!

Food Productivity – say the Greens, food productivity of farmland is falling behind the population and the only option, besides cutting the population, is to cut back on meat consumption and convert grazing lands to food crops. As noted in point 1, most grazing land cannot be converted. Everything dealing with the sustainable argument is based on some unseen crisis. Yet we do not have a world-wide food shortage or pending famine. In fact, the media is persistently reporting “price-depressing crop surpluses.” The only places where such shortages may exist are in totalitarian societies where government is controlling food production and supplies – kind of like the Green’s plan for sustainable beef.

Global Warming– here we go! Say the Greens, global warming is driven by energy consumption and cows are energy guzzlers. But there’s more to the story. Cow flatulence! A single dairy cow, they claim, produces an average of 75 kilos of methane annually. Meanwhile, environmentalists want to return the rangelands to historic species, including buffalo. And a buffalo, grazing on the same grass on the same lands would emit about the same amount of methane. It’s a non-issue.

Loss of Biodiversity– What are some of the examples the Greens give for loss of biodiversity? Poaching and black market sale of bushmeat including everything from elephants and chimpanzees to birds??? Please explain what this has to do with the American cattle industry – other than a pure hatred of anyone who eats meat of any kind. And that, of course, is the argument from the animal rights/vegan wing of the Green movement that is leading the assault on cattle.

Grassland Destruction– apparently this is based on the Green premise that domesticated animals like cows replaced bison and antelope, which, in turn, caused a loss of biodiversity of species. I’ve got two pieces of news for you. First, the Native Americans so revered by the Greens, hunted bison before the white man arrived. Take a trip to Bozeman, Montana and see the cliff where they used to run entire herds to their death, not just selectively choosing a few to eat. Second, the Greens, not the cattle ranchers, forced the reintroduction of wolves, and that has caused a near annihilation of the antelope and elk herds.

Soil Erosion – the Greens claim that U.S. pastureland is overgrazed, causing soil erosion. In truth, a great many of today’s cattlemen are third and fourth generation on their land. Those ranches could not have existed for over a hundred years if they were so careless in taking care of the land. It is vital to their survival to assure the land stays in good shape. Of course, an environmentalist who has never worked a ranch or farm and rarely comes out of his New York high-rise might not know that.

Lifestyle Disease– this is my favorite of the reasons why beef is supposedly unsustainable. In short, it’s because of stupid people! This one is blamed on “excessive” consumption of meat, combined with environmental pollution and “lack of exercise” leading to strokes, cancer, diabetes and heart attacks. So it’s the beef industries fault that people eat too much and refuse to exercise. The solution – ban meat consumption. Yet, doctors are now realizing that meat eating is not the problem, carbs are.

So, these are the ten main reasons why it’s charged that beef is unsustainable and must be ruled, regulated and frankly, eliminated. These are charges brought by anti-beef vegans who want all beef consumption stopped. In cahoots, are global Sustainablists who seek to stop the private ownership and use of land, all hiding under the blanket excuse of environmental protection.

To bring the cattle industry into line with this world view the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association has accepted the imposition of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, which is heavily influenced, if not controlled, by the World Wildlife Fund, one of the top three most powerful environmental organizations in the world and a leader in the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), which basically sets the rules for global environmental policy. This is the same World Wildlife Fund that issued a report saying, “Meat consumption is devastating some of the world’s most valuable and vulnerable regions, due to the vast amount of land needed to produce animal feed.” The report went on to say that, to save the Earth, it was vital that we change human consumption habits away from meat. As pointed out earlier, the fact is most land used for grazing isn’t capable of growing crops for food. Further, to have the WWF involved in any part of the beef industry is simply suicidal.

It’s interesting to note that the “Principles for Sustainable Beef Farming,” issued for the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef by the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Working Group (SAI), follow the exact guidelines originally presented in the United Nations’ Agenda 21/ Sustainable Development blueprint. Agenda 21 divided these into three categories including, Social Equity, Economic Prosperity and Ecological Integrity. Using almost identical terms, the SAI plan for Sustainable Beef uses the following headings for each section of its plan: Economic Sustainability, Social Sustainability, and Environmental Sustainability.

Under Social Sustainability are such items as Human Rights, Worker Environment, Business Integrity, and Worker Competence (that means that workers are required to have the proper, acceptable sustainable attitudes and beliefs). Under the heading Environmental Sustainability are Climate Change, Waste, and Biodiversity, for the reasons already discussed.

Regulations using these principles impose a political agenda that ignores the fact that smaller, independent cattle growers have proven to be the best stewards of their own land and that for decades have produced the highest grade of beef product in the world. Instead, to continue to produce they will be required to submit to centralized control by regulations that will never end and will always increase in costs and needless waste of manpower.

To follow the sustainable rules and be officially certified, the cattle growers must agree to have much of the use of their land reduced to provide for wildlife habitat. There are strict controls over water use and grazing areas. This forces the growers to have smaller herds, making the process more expensive and economically unviable for the industry. In addition, there is a new layer of industry and government inspectors, creating a massive bureaucratic overreach, causing yet more costs for the growers.

The Roundtable rules are now enforced through the packing companies. You see, the cattlemen actually have no direct market. Instead, they first bring their product to feedlots for final preparation. The feedlots then sell the cattle to the packers. The packers are the ones who then have direct contact with stores, restaurants and other entities that actually buy the beef. The packers are a major force in the Roundtable, working side by side with the WWF, and so dictate the rules to the feedlots to comply with sustainable certification for the cattle they will buy from the growers. If the beef they obtain isn’t grown according to the sustainable beef principles then the packers refuse to buy it. That has quickly put smaller feedlots out of business. Consequently, it also destroys the cattle growers who rely on the feedlots to take their product.

There are only four main packing companies in the United States. These are Cargill, Tysons, JBS and Marfrig. These packers have already successfully taken control of the hog and poultry industries. Tysons is now raising its chickens in China to ship here. JBS and Marfrig are both from Brazil. It’s interesting to note that one of their first tactics was to remove the country of origin labeling from the packaging so that consumers have no idea where their product is coming from. So as the packers force their expensive, unnecessary, and unworkable sustainable certification on American cattlemen, they are systematically bringing in cheaper product from other countries that don’t necessarily adhere to strict, sanitary, safe production American producers are known for. As a result, there is a noticeable rise in news reports of recalls of diseased chicken and beef in American grocery stores.

Some cattle growers have tried to fight back by creating new packing companies to compete and provide an honest market. However, the costs to do so are huge, as high as $50 million. One such company called Northern Beef Packers was formed, using all the latest state of the art, high-grade processing. The four established packers reacted by drastically reducing their prices to the grocers, thereby destroying any hope of establishing a market for the new packing company.

This then is the situation that is threatening the American beef industry. If one reads the documents and statements from the World Wildlife Fund, the United Nations Environment Program and others involved, it is not hard to realize that the true goal is not to produce a better grade of beef, but to ban it altogether. The question must then be asked, why is the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association allowing this to happen, and indeed, is joining with the Sustainable Beef Roundtable to force these policies on their members?

The answer is actually quite tragic. American ranchers, farmers and livestock growers have been targets of the environmental and animal rights movements for years. They are beaten down. Like the rest of us they just want to be left alone to work their farms and herds like their forefathers have done for more than a century. But the pressure is growing day by day. So, they have come to believe that if they just go along – put the sustainable label on their product — then this pressure will stop. In short, they see it as a pressure valve.

The reality is it’s not going to go away because the goal is not environmental protection, rather the destruction of their industry and control through what the UN calls the reorganization of human society. The attack has now grown to major proportions with the Green New Deal. Beef eaters have no place in the sustainable paradise of city apartment dwellers who accept government controls to choose for them what they are permitted to eat.

There are efforts to fight back. A group of cattlemen has organized under the banner of R-CALF (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund) and they have managed to slow the Sustainable capture of the industry. But the packers’ control of the industry is a major roadblock if the cattlemen can’t reach their market. R-CALF has filed Abuse of Conduct suits to shed light on the anti-trust activities of the monopoly tactics of the packers.

However, the beef industry cannot recover on its own. There must be outrage from the consumers who are facing higher prices, possible inferior meat, and the danger of disease because of this sustainable tyranny. If you want the right to your own food choices instead of the dictatorship of radical Greens, then get mad. Demand that “Country of Origin” labels be put on all beef products so you know where your food comes from. Demand that the Department of Agriculture rejects this sustainable myth and protects the American free market that has always provided superior products.

The so-called sustainable policy is not a free market. It is a government-sanctioned monopoly that is just short of a criminal enterprise. Stand with American farmers and cattlemen. If Americans don’t fight back now we will lose the freedom to our own dinner plates in the name of sustainable lies.

One of the main indicators used by economists to measure the health of the nation’s economy is housing starts – the number of private homes being built around the nation. In 2018 housing starts fell in all four regions of the nation, representing the biggest drop since 2016.

While many economists point to issues such as higher material costs as a reason for the drop in housing starts, a much more ominous reason may be emerging. Across the nation, city councils and state legislatures are beginning to remove zoning protections for single-family neighborhoods, claiming they are racist discrimination designed to keep certain minorities out of such neighborhoods. In response to these charges some government officials are calling for the end of single-family homes in favor of multiple family apartments.

Minneapolis, Minnesota: the city council is moving to remove zoning that protects single-family neighborhoods, instead planning to add apartment buildings in the mix. The mayor actually said such zoning was “devised as a legal way to keep black Americans and other minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods”. Racist, social injustice are the charges

Chicago, Illinois: So-called “affordable housing” advocates have filed a federal complaint against the longtime tradition of allowing City Aldermen veto power over most development proposals in their wards, charging that it promotes discrimination by keeping low-income minorities from moving into affluent white neighborhoods. Essentially the complaint seeks to remove the Aldermen’s ability to represent their own constituents.

Baltimore, Maryland: The NAACP filed a suit against the city charging that Section 8 public housing causes ghettos because they are all put into the same areas of town. They won the suit and now the city must spend millions of dollars to move such housing into more affluent neighborhoods. In addition, landlords are no longer permitted to ask potential tenants if they can afford the rent on their properties.

Oregon: Speaker of the Oregon House of Representatives Tina Kotek (D-Portland) is drafting legislation that would end single-family zoning in cities of 10,000 or more. She claims there is a housing shortage crisis and that economic and racial segregation are caused by zoning restrictions.

Such identical policies don’t just simultaneously spring up across the country by accident. There is a force behind it. The root of these actions are found in “fair housing” policies dictated by the federal Housing and Urban Development Agency (HUD). The affected communities have all taken HUD grants. There is very specific language in those grants that suggest single family homes are a cause of discrimination. Specifically, through the HUD program called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), the agency is taking legal action against communities that use “discriminating zoning ordinances that discourage the development of affordable, multifamily housing…”. The suits are becoming a widely used enforcement tool for the agency.

To enforce its social engineering policies HUD demands the following from communities that have applied for or taken HUD grants:

First, HUD forces the community to complete an “Assessment of Fair Housing” to identify all “contributing factors” to discrimination. These include a complete breakdown of race, income levels, religion, and national origin of every single person living there. They use this information to determine if the neighborhood meets a preset “balance,” determined by HUD.

Second, HUD demands a detailed plan showing how the community intends to eliminate the “contributing factors” to this “imbalance.”

Once the plan is prepared, then the community is required to sign an agreement to take no actions that are “materially inconsistent with its obligation to affirmatively further fair housing.”

Americans who have grown up experiencing private home ownership as the root to personal prosperity must quickly learn of the threat of the HUD/AFFH program. They must fully understand why cities like Chicago, Minneapolis and Baltimore and states like Oregon have suddenly announced actions to eliminate single-family home zoning. These cities have already taken the grant poison and must now comply. The ultimate government game is to reorganize our cities into massive urban areas where single-family neighborhoods are replaced by the Sustainable/Smart Growth model of “Stack and Pack,” wall-to-wall apartment buildings.

To the frustration of those Sustainablists determined to change our entire economic system, the legal protection of private property rights and ownership have proven to be a roadblock for implementation. New York Mayor William DeBlasio best expressed the frustration of those driving to control community development when he was quoted in New York Magazine saying, “What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it and what the rent will be.”

Most importantly, HUD and its social engineering advocates have sold these so-called sustainable policies using the well-worn excuse that such programs are simply to help lower income families to succeed. In fact, these programs are actually at the very root of why many of them are NOT succeeding.

The immediate result of eliminating single-family homes and in turn, destroying private property rights, is to degrade the property values of the homes so many have worked to build. It used to be called the American dream. Now it’s labeled racism, discrimination, and social injustice.

Eradicating poverty is the most popular excuse for the expansion of government power. Yet, it’s interesting to note that not a single government program, from the federal to the local level, offers any plan for eradicating poverty except the well-worn and unworkable scheme of wealth redistribution. After decades of following such a failed policy the only result is that we have more poor.

Today, as demonstrated in Oregon, Minneapolis, Baltimore and Chicago, we hear the claims that there is a “housing crisis” and so government must take a dramatic step to solve the very crisis is has created. As economist Thomas Sowell has said, “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

It is interesting to note that, as private property ownership shrinks under these misguided policies, so too does the nation’s wealth. Sustainable policies are at the root of nearly every local, state, and federal program. Each step diminishes individual freedom, personal and national prosperity, and the destruction of the hopes and dream of every American. The American Policy Center is determined to lead the fight to end this misnamed and disastrous ‘Sustainable’ course for our country.

Sometimes if you fight hard enough and refuse to back down, no matter the odds, your truth is vindicated and prevails!

For twenty years I have been labeled a conspiracy theorist, scaremonger, extremist, dangerous, nut case. I’ve been denied access to stages, major news programs, and awarded tin foil hats. All because I have worked to expose Agenda 21 and its policy of sustainable development as a danger to our property rights, economic system, and culture of freedom.

From its inception in 1992 at the United Nation’s Earth Summit, 50,000 delegates, heads of state, diplomats and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) hailed Agenda 21 as the “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society.” The 350-page, 40 chapter, Agenda 21 document was quite detailed and explicit in its purpose and goals. They warned us that the reorganization would be dictated through all-encompassing policies affecting every aspect of our lives, using environmental protection simply as the excuse to pull at our emotions and get us to voluntarily surrender our liberties.

Section I details “Social and Economic Dimensions” of the plan, including redistribution of wealth to eradicate poverty, maintain health through vaccinations and modern medicine, and population control.

To introduce the plan, the Earth Summit Chairman, Maurice Strong boldly proclaimed, “Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class – involving meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing – are not sustainable.” Of course, according to the plan, if it’s not “sustainable” it must be stopped.

In support of the plan, David Brower of the Sierra Club (one of the NGO authors of the agenda) said, “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license.” Leading environmental groups advocated that the Earth could only support a maximum of one billion people, leading famed Dr. Jacques Cousteau to declare, “In order to stabilize world populations, we must eliminate 350,000 people per day.”

Section II provides the “Conservation and Management of Resources for Development” by outlining how environmental protection was to be the main weapon, including global protection of the atmosphere, land, mountains, oceans, and fresh waters – all under the control of the United Nations.

To achieve such global control to save the planet, it is necessary to eliminate national sovereignty and independent nations. Eliminating national borders quickly led to the excuse for openly allowing the “natural migration” of peoples. The UN Commission on Global Governance clearly outlined the goal for global control stating, “The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation.” That pretty much explains why the supporters of such a goal go a little off the rails when a presidential candidate makes his campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”

The main weapon for the Agenda was the threat of Environmental Armageddon, particularly manifested through the charge of man-made global warming, later to conveniently become “climate change.” It didn’t matter if true science refused to cooperate in this scheme as actual global temperatures really are not rising and there continues to be no evidence of any man-made affect on the climate. Truth hasn’t been important to the scare mongers. Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation said, “We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.” To further drive home their complete lack of concern for truth, Paul Watson of Green Peace declared, “It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true.”

So in their zealotry to enforce the grand agenda, social justice became the “moral force” over the rule of law as free enterprise, private property, rural communities and individual consumption habits became the targets, labeled as racist and a social injustice. Such established institutions and free market economics were seen as obstructions to the plan, as were traditional family units, religion, and those who were able to live independently in rural areas.

Finally, Agenda 21 was summed up in supporting documents this way: “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced. It requires a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals, and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”

Of course, such harsh terms had to be hidden from the American people if the plan was to be successfully imposed. They called it a “suggestion” for “voluntary” action – just in case a nation or community wanted to do something positive for mankind! However, while using such innocent-sounding language, the Agenda 21 shock troops lost no time pushing it into government policy. In 1992, just after its introduction at the Earth Summit, Nancy Pelosi introduced a resolution of support for the plan into Congress. It’s interesting to note that she boldly called it a “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society.” In 1993, new President, Bill Clinton ordered the establishment of the President’s Council for Sustainable Development, with the express purpose of enforcing the Agenda 21 blueprint into nearly every agency of the federal government to assure it became the law of the land. Then the American Planning Association issued a newsletter in 1994, supporting Agenda 21’s ideas as a “comprehensive blueprint” for local planning. So much for a voluntary idea!

However, as we, the opponents started to gain some ground in exposing its true purpose and citizens began to storm city halls protesting local implementation, suddenly the once proud proponents lost their collective memories about Agenda 21. Never heard of it! “There are no blue-helmeted troops at city hall,” said one proponent, meaning policies being used to impose it were not UN driven, but just “local, local, local”. “Oh, you mean that innocuous 20 year-old document that has no enforcement capability? This isn’t that!” These were the excuses that rained down on us from the planners, NGOs and government agents as they scrambled to hide their true intentions.

I was attacked on the front page of the New York Times Sunday paper under the headline, “Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot.” The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) produced four separate reports on my efforts to stop it, calling our efforts an “Antigovernment Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory.” The Atlantic magazine ran a story entitled, “Is the UN Using Bike Paths to Achieve World Domination?” Attack articles appeared in the Washington Post, Esquire magazine, Wingnut Watch, Mother Jones, and Tree Hugger.com to name a few. All focused on labeling our opposition as tin-foil-hat-wearing nut jobs. Meanwhile, an alarmed American Planning Association (APA) created an “Agenda 21: Myths and Facts page on its web site to supposedly counter our claims. APA then organized a “Boot Camp” to retrain its planners to deal with us, using a “Glossary for the Public,” teaching them new ways to talk about planning. Said the opening line of the Glossary, “Given the heightened scrutiny of planners by some members of the public, what is said – or not said – is especially important in building support for planning.” The Glossary went on to list words not to use like “Public Visioning,” “Stakeholders,” “Density,” and “Smart Growth,” because such words make the “Critics see red”.

Local elected officials, backed by NGO groups and planners, began to deride local activists – sometimes denying them access to speak at public meetings, telling them that Agenda 21 conspiracy theory has “been debunked”. Most recently an irate city councilman answered a citizen who claimed local planning was part of Agenda 21 by saying “this is what’s “trending.” So, of course, if everyone is doing it is must be right!

Such has been our fight to stop this assault on our culture and Constitutional rights.

Over the years, since the introduction of Agenda 21 in 1992, the United Nations has created several companion updates to the original documents. This practice serves two purposes. One is to provide more detail on how the plan is to be implemented. The second is to excite its global activists with a new rallying cry. In 2000, the UN held the Millennium Summit, launching the Millennium Project featuring eight goals for global sustainability to be reached by 2015. Then, when those goals were not achieved, the UN held another summit in New York City in September of 2015, this time outlining 17 goals to be reached by 2030. This document became known as the 2030 Agenda, containing the exact same goals as were first outlined in Agenda 21in 1992, and then again in 2000, only with each new incarnation offering more explicit direction for completion.

Enter the Green New Deal, representing the boldest tactic yet. The origins and the purpose of the Green New Deal couldn’t be more transparent. The forces behind Agenda 21 and its goal of reorganizing human society have become both impatient and scared. Impatient that 27 years after Agenda 21 was introduced, and after hundreds of meetings, planning sessions, massive propaganda, and billions of dollars spent, the plan still is not fully in place. Scared because people around the world are starting to learn its true purpose and opposition is beginning to grow.

So the forces behind the Agenda have boldly thrown off their cloaking devices and their innocent sounding arguments that they just want to protect the environment and make a better life for us all. Instead, they are now openly revealing that their goal is socialism and global control, just as I’ve been warning about for these past twenty years. Now they are determined to take congressional action to finally make it the law of the land.

Take a good look, those of you who have heard my warnings about Agenda 21 over the years. Do you see the plan I have warned about being fully in place in this Green New Deal?

I warned that Agenda 21 would control every aspect of our lives, including how and were we live, the jobs we have, the mode of transportation available to us, and even what we eat. The Green New Deal is a tax on everything we do, make, wear, eat, drink, drive, import, export and even breathe.

In opposing Smart Growth plans in your local community, I said the main goal was to eliminate cars, to be replaced with bikes, walking, and light rail trains. The Green New Deal calls for the elimination of the internal combustion engine. Stay alert. The next step will be to put a ban on the sale of new combustion engines by a specific date and then limiting the number of new vehicles to be sold. Bans on commercial truck shipping will follow. Then they will turn to airplanes, reducing their use. Always higher and higher taxes will be used to get the public to “voluntarily” reduce their use of such personal transportation choices. That’s how it works, slowly but steadily towards the goal.

I warned that under Smart Growth programs now taking over every city in the nation that single-family homes are a target for elimination, to be replaced by high-rise stack and pack apartments in the name of reducing energy use. That will include curfews on carbon heating systems, mandating they be turned off during certain hours. Heating oil devises will become illegal. Gradually, energy use of any kind will be continually reduced. The Green New Deal calls for government control of every single home, office and factory to tear down or retrofit them to comply with massive environmental energy regulations.

I warned that Agenda 21 Sustainable policy sought to drive those in rural areas off the farms and into the cities where they could be better controlled. Those in the cities will be ordered to convert their gardens into food producers. Most recently I warned that the beef industry is a direct target for elimination. It will start with mandatory decreases in meat consumption until it disappears form our daily diet. The consumption of dairy will follow. Since the revelation of the Green New Deal the national debate is now over cattle emissions of methane and the drive to eliminate them from the planet. Controlling what we eat is a major part of the Green New Deal.

I warned that part of the plan for Agenda 2030 was “Zero Economic Growth.” The Green New Deal calls for a massive welfare plan where no one earns more than anyone else. Incentive to get ahead is dead. New inventions would disrupt their plan for a well-organized, controlled society. So, where will jobs come from after we have banned most manufacturing, shut down most stores, stopped single-family home construction, closed the airline industry, and severely regulated farms and the entire food industry? This is their answer to the hated free markets and individual choice.

The Green New Deal will destroy the very concept of our Constitutional Republic, eliminating private property, locally elected representative government, free markets and individual freedom. All decisions in our lives will be made for us by the government – just to protect the environment of course. They haven’t forgotten how well that scheme works to keep the masses under control.

Though the label “Green New Deal” has been passing around globalist circles for a while, it’s interesting that its leaders have now handed it to a naïve, inexperienced little girl from New York who suddenly found herself rise from bartending to a national media sensation, almost over nigh. That doesn’t just happen and there is no miracle here. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a created product. They probably needed her inexperienced enthusiasm to deliver the Green New Deal because no established politician would touch it. Now that it’s been introduced and she is set up to take the heat, the gates have swung open allowing forty-five members of Congress to co-sponsor it in the House of Representatives as established Senator Ed. Markey (D-MA) has sponsored it in the Senate. That doesn’t just happen either. Nothing has been left to chance.

Behind the sudden excitement and rush to support it are three radical groups each having direct ties to George Soros, including the Sunrise Movement – which markets itself as an “army of young people” seeking to make climate change a major priority. Justice Democrats – which finds and recruits progressive candidates, and New Consensus – organized to change how we think about issues. Leaders of these groups have connections with other Soros-backed movements including Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street. According to The New Yorker magazine, the plan was written over a single weekend in December, 2018. Ocasio-Cortez was included in the effort, chosen to introduce it. This may be the single reason why she was able to appear out of nowhere to become the new darling of the radical left.

So there you have it — Agenda 21, the Millennium Project, Agenda 2030, the Green New Deal. Progress in the world of Progressives! They warned us from the beginning that their plan was the “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society”. And so it is to be the total destruction of our way of life.

To all of those elected officials, local, state and federal, who have smirked at we who have tried to sound the alarm, look around you now, hot shots! You have denied, ignored, and yet, helped put these very plans into place. Are you prepared to accept what you have done? Will you allow your own homes and offices to be torn down – or will you be exempt as part of the elite or just useful idiots? Will you have to give up your car and ride your bike to work? Or is that just for we peasants?

Over these years you have listened to the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, ICLEI, the American Planning Association, and many more, as they assured you their plans were just environmental protection, just good policy for future generations. They have been lying to you to fulfill their own agenda! Well, now the truth is right in front of you. There is no question of who and what is behind this. And no doubt as to what the final result will be.

Now, our elected leaders have to ask real questions. As the Green New Deal is implemented, and all energy except worthless, unworkable wind and solar are put into place, are you ready for the energy curfews that you will be forced to impose, perhaps each night as the sun fades, forcing factories, restaurants, hospitals, and stores to close at dusk? How about all those folks forced to live in the stack and pack high-rises when the elevators don’t operate? What if they have an emergency?

How much energy will it take to rebuild those buildings that must be destroyed or retrofitted to maker them environmentally correct for your brave new world? Where will it come from after you have banned and destroyed all the workable sources of real energy? What are you counting on to provide you with food, shelter, and the ability to travel so you can continue to push this poison? Because – this is what’s trending — now! And how is it going to be financed when the entire economy crashes under its weight? Is it really the future you want for you, your family, and your constituents who elected you?

Every industry under attack by this lunacy should now join our efforts to stop it. Cattlemen, farmers, airlines, the auto industry, realtors, tourist industry, and many more, all will be put out of business – all should now take bold action to immediately kill this plan before it kills your industry. Stomp it so deeply into the ground that no politician will ever dare think about resurrecting it.

For years I’ve watched politicians smirk, roll their eyes, and sigh whenever the words Agenda 21 were uttered. As George Orwell said, “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those who speak it”. Today I stand vindicated in my warnings of where Agenda 21 was truly headed, because it’s not longer me having to reveal the threat. They are telling you themselves. Here’s the naked truth – Socialism is for the stupid. The Green New Deal is pure Socialism. How far its perpetrators get in enforcing it depends entirely on how hard you are willing to fight for freedom. Kill it now or watch it die.

Like this:

A couple weeks ago, Tom DeWeese sent out a letter about the World Wildlife Fund and beef. It reads in part:

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is one of the top three most powerful, radical, anti-free enterprise, UN environmental groups in the world.

And WWF has succeeded in taking over the American Cattle industry!

The WWF has forced cattlemen to follow radical Sustainable rules through the establishment of the Global Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

They are getting away with this industry grab because the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is now under the control of the World Wildlife Fund.

And the WWF’s Sustainable Roundtable now controls the beef packing industry which in turn controls the entire beef retail market. Cattlemen either toe the WWF dictates or are cut out of the industry.

That means cattlemen must follow massive regulations in order to produce American beef.

These rules ignore that fact that American cattlemen have always produced the highest grade of beef in the world – simply by using a process that has been used by their forefathers for generations.

The real result of these rules isn’t to produce a better beef product – but to destroy small producers and drive the industry to the massive corporate farms that can afford to play ball with the World Wildlife Fund.

Eventually, the WWF goal is to destroy the entire beef industry.

The World Wildlife Fund has openly stated its opposition to beef production. They insist that to “Save the Earth it is demanded that we change human consumption habits away from beef.”

Here is what they said in a recent WWF report:

“Meat consumption is devastating some of the world’s most valuable and vulnerable regions, due to the vast amount of land needed to produce animal feed.”

This is the growing threat of Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development and its stated purpose to “reorganize human society.”

And this is how they do it – one industry at a time.

In 1992, I wrote the following article for Putting People First, an organization I founded to combat the lies and aims of the animal rights movement. Animal rights is a false front; it is an attack on humans while pretending to care about animals. The leaders have no use for animals other than to change our culture and control our food supply. Many environmentalists and animal rightists go back and forth across the line that might separate them. For example, Paul Watson looked into the eye of a dying whale and saw that the whale “had pity for us.” Many ALF (Animal Liberation Front) ELF (Earth Liberation Front) members are the same people; terrorism on behalf of animals is as comfortable for them as on behalf of Gaia/mother earth.

“ANIMAL RIGHTS” HIDES UNDER ENVIRONMENTALISM

During the past two years, Putting People First has reported on arsons, bombings and attempted murder by “animal rights” activists. Our exposure of their terrorism has helped awaken the public to the true agenda of what we call the animal cult.

But as the morally bankrupt ideology of animalism has been exposed, its apologists have gone to ground, seeking cover under the more publicly-acceptable guise of “environmentalism.”

Most members of Putting People First consider themselves environmentalists, because we support wise use and conservation, and oppose environmental destruction (just as we support animal welfare and oppose animal abuse).

However, we also oppose attempts to remove people from the natural equation. We believe that only man can use science, reason and common sense to husband animals and other resources to the benefit of people, animals, and our common environment.

And the difference between conservation and “environmentalism” is no less than the difference between animal welfare and “animal rights.”

Jeremy Rifkin’s new vegetarian manifesto Beyond Beef hides its message behind a pseudoenvironmentalist facade. The supposedly “mainstream” Chesapeake Bay Foundation shared the podium with PeTA at “Vegetarian Expo ’92.” The radical Humane Society of the United States now calls its school-infiltration arm the National Association for Humane and Environmental Education. And the terrorist manual A Declaration of War by “Screaming Wolf’ is subtitled “Killing People to Save Animals and the Environment.”

I think the clearest example of the unity of environmentalism and animalism is the close relationship between the terrorist Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the “ecotage” group Earth First! These groups have been working together at least since 1987, when arsons at a California meat processing plant and livestock facility were claimed as joint ALF/Earth First! actions.

Since then. Earth First! Journal has published several laudatory articles about ALF, including one featuring Rod Coronado, the FBI’s leading suspect in several recent arsons. The March 1992 issue carried a terrorist “how-to” article with the ALF byline. The Journal is best known for trying to recruit “terminally ill AIDS patients” for “eco-kamikazee missions.”

Earth First! founder David Foreman is the former chief lobbyist for the Wilderness Society. He says, “Mankind could go extinct and I for one would not shed any tears.” Regarding the Ethiopian famine, Foreman gave this advice: “The worst thing we could do in Ethiopia is give aid. . .. The best thing would be to just let nature seek its own balance, to let people there starve.”

“As radical environmentalists, we can see AIDS not as a problem, but as a necessary solution,” says Foreman. “AIDS is a good thing, because it will thin out the population,” he adds. “If the AIDS epidemic didn’t exist, radical environmentalists would have to invent one.” And indeed, Earth First! Journal has solicited donations toward the development of what it calls “a species-specific virus to wipe out the human race.”

Foreman’s magazine Wild Earth recently opined that “phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth, social and environmental.” Foreman is not alone in this opinion. “Somewhere along the line—at about a million years ago, maybe half that—we quit the contract and became a cancer. We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the earth,” writes David Graber, a biologist with the National Park Service. “Until such time as Homo Sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along.”

Earth First! is best known for tree-spiking, although four of its leaders were recently convicted of conspiracy to sabotage a nuclear power plant in Arizona. Two Earth First! members, Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, were seriously injured when a bomb they were transporting exploded prematurely in Bari’s car in Oakland, California. B­ari and Cherney’s legal fees were paid by Greenpeace, on whose board sits Earth First! co-founder Michael Roselle.

Sierra Club lobbyist David Brower openly defends Earth First!, saying, “They’re not terrorists. The real terrorists are the polluters, the despoilers.” Brower argues that childbearing should be “a punishable crime against society unless the parents hold a government license.” All potential parents, he says, should be “required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing.”

According to Brower, “I founded Friends of the Earth to make the Sierra Club look reasonable. Then I founded the Earth Island Institute to make Friends of the Earth look reasonable. Earth First! now makes us look reasonable. We’re still waiting for someone to come along and make Earth First! look reasonable.”

Just as “animal rights” terrorists and their apologists infiltrated and took over many traditional animal welfare groups and local humane societies, so have anti-human “Greens” infiltrated and taken over many traditional conservation groups.

It is time to flush these varmints out. We have had great success educating the public about the difference between animal welfare and “animal rights.” Now it is time to educate them about the difference between conservation and “environmentalism.”

In 1992, the National Cattlemen’s Association (NCA) was run by true pioneers and American patriots. Like many organizations that represent meat, milk, circuses, rodeos, zoos, medical research, wool, leather, fur, silk, and pet ownership, the NCA has been co-opted one way or the other to turn it’s back on those who they represent; those who built and feed America.

As you can see, both animal rights and the so-called environmental movement are not friends of humans, animals, or the earth. But they are double-teaming us to take away our rights and freedoms.

Many seem bewildered by the anti-Trump riots and demonstrations that have covered the nation since the 2016 election. And many keep trying to find a reasonable response. Give it up. You can’t reason with them with words.

Here is my take. They know full well that they aren’t going to overturn the election. These privately funded forces are being used to create pressure to destroy the Electoral College so they won’t have to deal with it next election. This is how the Left operates. Make a big deal over here to force the hidden agenda over there. The plan is to make enough trouble that Congress will move to abolish the EC to get some peace.

For clues on who is behind this effort one only has to watch to see which member of Congress would propose such action. The answer, of course, was California Senator Barbara Boxer. It only took a week after the election for her to come to the rescue of the broken and distraught Left.

The danger is real and gaining ground. But it didn’t start with the 2016 election result. A campaign to eliminate the Electoral College and “let the people elect the president,” has been gaining steam for several years. A group called “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/ started in 2006, has won commitments from eleven states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote. These include Maryland, New Jersey, Illinois, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Massachusetts, California, New York, Hawaii, the District of Columbia and Connecticut. These states control 172 electoral votes. They only need states representing 98 more electoral votes to join and the Electoral College will be a thing of the past. Meanwhile, such legislation is under consideration in Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arizona, to name a few.

When a state passes legislation to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, it pledges that all of that state’s electoral votes will be given to whichever presidential candidate wins the popular vote nationwide. These bills will take effect only when states with a majority of the electoral votes have passed similar legislation. States with electoral votes totaling 270 of the 538 electoral votes would have to pass NPV bills before the compact kicks in and any state’s bill could take effect.

As usual, it’s easy to get people to join this cause – yet another sound bite based on emotion rather than knowledge or logic. “Let the people decide.” “It’s the American way.” “It’s Democracy at work.” Yep, that’s why America was never set up as a democracy. Here’s another sound bite for you – “Democracy is a lynch mob.” Here’s another one – “Democracy is three wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.” Majority rule violates the rights of minorities. It’s not a good thing. Get the picture?

The United States was created by the individual sovereign states. They were already free and independent governments on their own. As they came together to create a central government they feared it would grow too strong and overpower the states, making them subjugated to the central government. So, to prevent that, the states created the Electoral College to make the election of the President a STATE election.

Throughout history, certain factions have challenged the legality of the Electoral College. Opponents point out that our President is actually elected by 538 virtually unknown people who are members of 51 small delegations in fifty States and the District of Columbia. Moreover, in most states, the electors are not even bound to vote for the candidate that won the popular vote. In fact, many Constitutional scholars believe that’s just what the founders intended, 538 independent thinkers, bound to no one. There is reason and logic behind the idea.

The Founding Fathers, particularly those from small States, were very concerned that they would be smothered by the larger states. Under the representative republic (not a democracy) established by the founders, the United States is made up of fifty sovereign States. Under the Constitution, except for limited powers specifically defined for the central government, power for the rule of law is intended to reside in the States.

To deal with the problem, the founders decided on a compromise that would establish two chambers for the Congress; the House of Representatives, whose size would be dictated by the population in each state and the Senate in which every state would get two representatives, regardless of its size or population. You see, in the beginning, the states appointed Senators to be their representatives in Congress. But, like these so-called scholars of today who want to wreck the Electoral College, previous “experts” came up with the idea that Senators should be elected by the people – “It’s only fair,” went the mantra! The result is an imperial Senate that answers to no one but their own elite club members. That’s what happens when you mess with the real genius of the Constitution.

The same problem arose in deciding how to select a President, the one nationally-elected official. Here again, there was the fear that election by popular vote would overwhelm the will of smaller States. Again, a compromise was reached to address the issue in a fair and equitable manner in order to maintain the power of the states. Each state was assigned a number of presidential electoral votes equal to its representation in the House and the Senate. In each state, the electors would vote for a President and Vice President. The candidate receiving the largest number of electoral votes would be elected.

Under the plan, the connection to the popular vote was the selection of state electors. The popular vote was to be used to select individuals trusted by the people to select the President. Each presidential candidate has a slate of electors committed to them. As the people vote for a candidate, they are actually electing his/her slate of electors. Again, the selection of electors goes directly to local control of the process. Under the Constitution, even the smallest state was assured at least three votes in the process. To provide a further check to protect the smaller states, in the event no candidate won a majority of the electoral vote, the names of the top five would go to the House of Representatives, where each state delegation would cast one vote for one of the candidates. In this process each state, again, is equal.

To understand the Electoral College one must realize that the Founders considered the states as the dominant power in the nation. Election of the office of President was a bit like the selection of the Chairman of the Board, with the states serving as the board of directors for the nation. The great mistake Electoral College opponents make is to believe the President was supposed to be elected by the people. It was never the plan.

There are fundamental and often regional differences in how Americans view the role of government and the leaders they elect to run it. Little wonder those who seek to strengthen the power of the central government prefer that elections be decided by the popular vote. It’s a great sound bite- but the results will not give “the people” the “fair” result they desire.

Such a move will eliminate the power of individual states in favor of elections decided by the population of large, politically liberal cities. I’ve actually heard it said by residents of California, San Francisco, in particular, “why do we even let people in Ohio and Iowa vote?” Such elitism is behind the “National Popular Vote” movement which apparently believes that only the East and West Coasts count. The rest is just flyover country.

Keep these facts in mind as we watch the enforcement of Sustainable Development policies that lead to Smart Growth cities. The stated plans of such ideas are that most people will eventually be ‘persuaded” to leave the rural areas and migrate to the cities. In addition, we now are witnessing the invasion of illegal immigrants who normally land in such communities and swell their size.

The “feel good” propaganda of the National Popular Vote movement insists that a popular vote would not change the face of the nation. However, by design or not, the fact is their scheme plays right into the hands of the Sustainablists who openly seek top-down control through the establishment of megacities. By forcing the massive majority of citizens into such areas, a majority vote in just a few will drown any other area in the nation.

In such a planned agenda for the 21st Century, individuals living in the majority of the nation’s territory will quickly learn how little their “popular vote” counts if the Electoral College is abandoned by the “National Popular Vote” scheme. Those smaller states (and therefore their votes) may have no impact on the election of the President, just as our founders feared. Control by a few over the many can only be defined as tyranny.

The abolishment of the Electoral College would, in fact, establish an election tyranny giving control of the government to the massive population centers of the nation’s Northeastern sector, along with the area around Los Angeles. If these sections of the nation were to control the election of our nation’s leaders, the voice of the ranchers and farmers of the Mid and Far West would be lost, along with the values and virtues of the South. It would also mean the end of the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty.

Not happy to even let the states decide if they want to support the idea of the National Popular vote or not, the hard Left has manufactured the unrest in the streets to pressure a fast solution. In 2016 Senator Boxer answered the call with legislation to end the Electoral College. Such demands to end it masquerade as the answer to the people’s unrest. If achieved the end, the result will have nothing to do with Donald Trump. He is just the convenient excuse.

Allow that to happen now and the great silent majority of middle America in this nation will never again have a fair say in who is elected our president. And that is the true goal of today’s unrest.

Like this:

Not One Inch… The Battle Cry For Property Rights- “No matter how noble a project may sound, alarm bells should go off when proponents want to enforce their vision in secret.”

by Tom DeWeese

I have been pushing hard lately to let people know that, no matter how big and powerful the opposition, the assault from big government forces can be stopped. That’s why I want to tell you about a recent major victory in Louisiana where a wonderful, determined group of residents rose up and stopped the implementation of the Caddo Lake National Heritage Area. By the way, this is the second NHA we’ve stopped. The Crooked Road NHA in Virginia was successfully shut down by us a few years ago.

National Heritage Areas are one of the most despicable stealth land grabs in the nation. Here’s why. Americans love history. And we love preserving significant places that played an important role in the making of our unique nation. So when we hear of a new plan in our area presented offering a chance to preserve some of our local heritage we are interested and even supportive.

But, in this day of massive government control over so much of our land, our economy, and our basic ability to live free lives, we must be cautious and look at the details of plans, no matter how innocent or well meaning they may seem.

National Heritage Areas are such a concern because they are sold to residents as simply a means to honor historic or cultural events that took place in a specific locale. We are told that they will preserve our culture and honor the past, that they will preserve battlefields where our forefathers fought and died for freedom, and that they will preserve birth places, homes, buildings and hallowed grounds for posterity. Most importantly, we are assured that NHAs will help build tourism and boost local economies.

The residents affected by the Caddo Lake NHA were suspicious because so little information was being released about the project. Who was behind it? Where was the money coming from? Above all, what specific areas were going to be affected? So some determined residents did their homework. They learned the promises of increased tourism and boosts to the economy were, at best, empty. Rather, they learned NHA’s are little more than pork-barrel earmarks that endanger private property rights and local governmental powers. And a very specific danger is that Heritage Areas have very definite boundaries that come with very definite consequences for folks who reside within them. That’s because funding and technical assistance for Heritages Areas is administered through the National Park Service, a federal agency with a long history of hostility toward private landowners.

Private organizations and planning groups are the actual recipients of most of these funds supposedly earmarked for the Heritage Area. These entities operate as the promoters of the NHA in partnership with the Park Service. Eventually they form a commission or a “managing entity” to enforce the “vision” to implement the Heritage Area.

Typically such commissions consist of strictly ideological special interests groups. In the mix of these groups one will find all of the usual suspects: environmental groups, planning groups, historic preservation groups, all with their own private agendas – all working behind the scenes, creating policy. The managing entity then sets up non-elected boards and regional councils to oversee policy inside the Heritage Area that stretches over numerous communities and counties.

In many cases, these groups actually form a compact with the Interior Department to determine the guidelines that will make up a land use management plan and the boundaries of the Heritage Area itself. The management plan is their goal for how they envision the territory inside the boundary to be run. The plan will include guidelines for development goals, energy use, bike trails, undefined conservation controls, tourism, and anything else they want to control.

Now, after the boundaries are drawn and after the management plan has been approved by the Park Service, the management entity and its special interest groups are given the federal funds, typically a million dollars a year, or more, and told to spend that money to get the management plan enacted at the local level.

Here’s how those special interest groups operate with those funds. They go to local county boards and city councils and announce that Congress has passed legislation designating the Heritage Area and that the community is now within those boundaries. They pull out maps and announce the properties they have identified to be significant for preservation.

However, as the managing entity, they don’t have the power to make laws but the local elected officials do and so the partnership is born, fed by the federal money. Now the managing entity will help create tools, legislation, guidelines and whatever regulatory procedures are needed to make the management plan come into fruition.

Incredibly, proponents argue that National Heritage Areas do not influence local zoning or land-use planning. Yet by definition this is precisely what they do. Found right in the language of most Heritage Area legislation, the management entity is specifically directed to restore, preserve, and manage anything and everything that is naturally, culturally, historically, and recreationally significant to the Heritage Area.

This sweeping mandate ensures that virtually every square inch of land within the boundaries is subject to the scrutiny of Park Service bureaucrats and their managing partners.

Of course, as with so many other invasive planning schemes, we are always assured that these are local initiatives, and that these are something citizens want in order to bring an honorary federal designation to help drive tourism into their regions. That simply isn’t the case. The private, non-governmental organizations and planning groups are the ones who want the plan because they get to enforce their private agendas and then get to live off the grant money as they implement them. As proponents talk about historic preservation inside the Heritage Area, one will also find the catchwords “resource conservation” and “resource stewardship,” for example. That’s the clue to watch for.

It’s all about control. Control of the land, control of resources, control of decision making. How does that fit with their stated purpose of preserving American culture – which, of course, was built on the ideals of free enterprise and private property? In fact, it does the opposite by making government more powerful and dictatorial.

Proponents of NHAs also claim that they are “locally driven” projects. Nothing could be further from the truth. Landowners within the boundaries of proposed Heritage Areas are left in the dark throughout the entire process. For example, the final official map for the Caddo Lakes National Heritage Area, revealing its official boundary, was not to be released to the public until after the actual Congressional legislation was passed.

In addition, Heritage Area proponents refuse to supply a simple written notification to property owners that their land will be inside the boundaries. Seemingly the Park Service and their management “partners” are not too eager to share all the good news with the local citizenry.

I have personally been in meetings with congressional staffers to discuss Heritage Areas. I asked them if they intended to notify affected landowners living inside the boundaries of a specific Heritage Area. They looked at me like I had two heads.

They shuffled their feet and looked down at the table and then said, “There’s no way to do that.” “It would be too costly.” “How could we reach everyone?” I then suggested that they research a little know federal agency called the U.S. Postal Service. Mailmen appear too deliver to each and every one of the homes in the designated area every day.

The fact is, they don’t want to tell you in advance. You might object. And that would disrupt the “process.” No matter how noble a project may sound, alarm bells should go off when proponents want to enforce their vision in secret.

National Heritage Areas depend on federal tax dollars because they lack local interest— and not a single Heritage Area has ever succeeded in attracting that interest throughout their entire infinite lives. The federal money is the villain. If you just wanted to honor an area for its historic or cultural achievements, a simple resolution from Congress and a plaque at the county line could do that. The local Chamber of Commerce could then pick it up from there and build the expected tourism.

But of course, it’s not about that. It’s about control and money – lots of money in the pockets of private groups promoting their own agendas. Including taking control if people’s land.

There are 49 National Heritage Areas across the country so far – with more, now being considered around the country. Caddo Lake NHA, if legislated, would affect 900 square miles of private property, businesses, and whole communities. That’s a massive area to cover.

Along the Mississippi River there are two Heritage Areas, Mississippi Delta National Heritage Area and Mississippi Gulf Coast National Heritage Area. Now here is a region rich in history. There must be all kinds of good things happening along the mother of all rivers in the name of heritage preservation.

Well, today you won’t find people participating in one of the grand historic traditions of the river – living on riverboats. There were once whole generations of river people living on such boats. Talk about American heritage – right out of Mark Twain! Continue Reading

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There is an all out assault taking place in nearly every community against private property ownership. It’s being perpetrated at every level of government and funded by taxpayer grants. Yet few property owners raise objections, mainly because today most don’t have the basic understanding of the right of property ownership and its vital place in preserving our nation’s prosperity, economic stability and foundation of freedom.

Most Americans tend to think of private property simply as a home — the place where the family resides, store their belongings and find shelter and safety from the elements. It’s where you live. It’s yours because you pay the mortgage and the taxes. That’s about the extent of thought given to property ownership in today’s America.

There was a time when property ownership was considered to be much more. Property, and the ability to own and control it, was life itself. The great economist, John Locke, whose writings and ideas had major influence on the nation’s founders, believed that “life and liberty are secure only so long as the right of property is secure.”

Locke advocated that if property rights protection did not exist then the incentive for an industrious person to develop and improve property would be destroyed; depriving that person of the fruits of his labor; that marauding bands would confiscate by force the goods produced by others; and that mankind would be impelled to remain on a bare subsistence level of hand to mouth survival from fear that the accumulation of anything of value would invite attack.

Homeownership, and the equity it creates, has been the main source of wealth for millions of Americans. It’s the reason the United States was able to build incredible wealth and rise above much older nations. Sixty percent of American businesses were created by homeowners using the equity from their homes. Where private property is disallowed teeming and unrelenting poverty is the result.

Locke’s fears have become reality today through the innocent sounding term called “Sustainable Development. Under that banner, the very concept of property rights is being targeted as unrealistic in a drive to reorganize our communities through strict planning regulations.

Proponents define Sustainable Development as: “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” According to its advocates, to achieve that goal requires massive amounts of land and natural resources to be permanently locked away from use; which translates to control, not conservation, as many perceive it to mean.

Sustainable Development requires a complete transformation of American society that will affect our system of justice, our economic system, and our ability to make individual life choices such as careers, family size, and the location of our homes.

The best known form of the Sustainable transformation is called Smart Growth. We’re told this policy is necessary to create the community of the future, to guarantee effective planning, and, most importantly, to protect the environment by reducing our carbon footprint to combat climate change.

Attending a local public meeting where the community‘s new “visioning” plan is being promoted, citizens will be assured that everything has been prepared by local leaders simply to address unique problems and well-laid plan for the future. However, a little research will show, ironically, that almost every community in every state has a nearly identical plan in process, usually ending with numbers like 2030 or 2050. One can also search the Internet and find such plans as Jamaica 2050 and Dubai 2050. They cover the world and most importantly – they are all the same basic plan no matter where they are, nationally or globally. One thing they all have in common – none of them are LOCAL!… CONTINUE READING ON OUR WEBSITE

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Will Brett Kavanaugh Stand for Property Rights?-“The homeowner came under greater pressure to sell.”

by Tom DeWeese

There’s lots of talk about where Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh stands on the Roe v Wade abortion decision and if he would vote to rescind it. There is another very controversial Supreme Court decision made just few years ago, supported by the Anthony Kennedy, the justice he seeks to replace. That is the Kelo decision that basically obliterated private property rights in America. So, where does Brett Kananaugh stand on protection of private property rights? With Kennedy or the Constitution?

In 2005, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down an opinion that shocked the nation. It was the case of Susette Kelo, et al. v City of New London, Connecticut, et al. The issue: “Does the government taking of property from one private owner to give to another private entity for economic development constitutes a permissible ‘public use’ under the Fifth Amendment?”

In 2000, the city of New London saw a chance to rake in big bucks through tax revenues for a new downtown development project that was to be anchored by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. The company announced a plan to build a $270 million dollar global research facility in the city. The local government jumped at the chance to transform 90 acres of an area right next to the proposed research facility. Their plans called for the creation of the Fort Trumbull development project which would provide hotels, housing and shopping areas for the expected influx of Pfizer employees. There were going to be jobs and revenues A-Go-Go in New London. Just one obstacle stood in the way of these grand plans. There were private homes in that space.

No muss – no fuss. The city fathers had a valuable tool in their favor. They would just issue an edict that they were taking the land by eminent domain. The city created a private development corporation to lead the project. First priority for the new corporation was to obtain the needed property.

In July, 1997, Susette Kelo bought a nice little pink house in a quiet fort Trumbull neighborhood of New London. Little did she imagine that warm, comfy place would soon become the center of a firestorm.

She had no intention of selling. She’d spent a considerable amount of money and time fixing up her little pink house, a home with a beautiful view of the waterfront that she could afford. She planted flowers in the yard, braided her own rugs for the floors, filled the rooms with antiques and created the home she wanted.

Less than a year later, the trouble started. A real estate broker suddenly showed up at her door representing an unknown client. Susette said she wasn’t interested in selling. The realtor’s demeanor then changed, warning that the property was going to be condemned by the city. One year later, on the day before Thanksgiving, the sheriff taped a letter to Kelo’s door, stating that her home had been condemned by the City of New London.

Then the pressure began. A notice came in the mail telling her that the city intended to take her land. An offer of compensation was made, but it was below the market price. The explanation given was that, since the government was going to take the land, it was no longer worth the old market price, therefore the lower price was “just compensation,” as called for in the Fifth Amendment. It was a “fair price,” Kelo and the homeowners were told over and over.

Some neighbors quickly gave up, took the money and moved away. With the loss of each one, the pressure mounted. Visits from government agents became routine. They knocked on the door at all hours, demanding she sell. Newspaper articles depicted her as unreasonably holding up community progress. They called her greedy. Finally, the bulldozers moved in on the properties already sold. As they crushed down the houses, the neighborhood became unlivable. It looked like a war zone.

In Susette Kelo’s neighborhood, the imposing bulldozer was sadistically parked in front of a house, waiting. The homeowner came under greater pressure to sell. More phone calls, threatening letters, visits by city officials at all hours demanding they sign the contract to sell. It just didn’t stop. Finally the intimidation began to break down the most dedicated homeowners’ resolve. In tears, they gave in and sold. Amazingly, once they sold, the homeowners were then classified as “willing sellers!”

Immediately, as each house was bulldozed, the monster machine was moved to the next house, sitting there like a huffing, puffing dragon, ready to strike.

Finally Susette’s little pink house stood nearly alone in the middle of a destruction site. Over 80 homes were gone: seven remained. As if under attack by a conquering army, she was finally surrounded, with no place to run but to the courts. Under any circumstances the actions of the New London government and its sham development corporation should have been considered criminal behavior. It used to be. If city officials were caught padding their own pockets, or those of their friends, it was considered graft. That’s why RICO laws were created.

The United States was built on the very premise of the protection of private property rights. How could a government possibly be allowed to take anyone’s home for private gain? Surely justice would finally prevail.

The city was backed in its appeal by the National League of Cities, one of the largest proponents of eminent domain use, saying the policy was critical to spurring urban renewal with development projects. However, the Supreme Court had always stood with the founders of the nation on the vital importance of private property. There was precedent after precedent to back up the optimism that they would do so again.

Finally, her case was heard by the highest court in the land. It was such an obvious case of government overreach against private property owners that no one considered there was a chance of New London winning. That’s why it was a shock to nearly everyone involved that private property rights sustained a near-death blow that day.

This time, five black robes named Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Breyer shocked the nation by ruling that officials who had behaved like Tony Soprano were in the right and Susette Kelo had no ground to stand on, literally or figuratively.

These four men and one woman ruled that the United States Constitution is meaningless as a tool to protect individuals against the wants and desires of government. Their ruling in the Kelo case declared that Americans own nothing. After deciding that any property is subject to the whim of a government official, it was just a short trip to declaring that government could now confiscate anything we own, anything we create, anything we’ve worked for – in the name of an undefined common good.

Justice Sandra Day O’Conner, who opposed the Court’s decision, vigorously rebutted the Majority’s argument, as she wrote in dissent of the majority opinion, “The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the state from replacing a Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory.”

Justice Clarence Thomas issued his own rebuttal to the decision, specifically attacking the argument that this was a case about “public use.” He accused the Majority of replacing the Fifth Amendment’s “Public Use” clause with a very different “Public Purpose” test. Said Justice Thomas “This deferential shift in phraseology enables the Court to hold against all common sense, that a costly urban-renewal project whose stated purpose is a vague promise of new jobs and increased tax revenue, but which is also suspiciously agreeable to the Pfizer Corporation, is for a public use.”

Astonishingly the members of the Supreme Court have no other job but to protect the Constitution and defend it from bad legislation. They sit in their lofty ivory tower, with their lifetime appointments, never actually having to worry about job security or the need to answer to political pressure. Yet, these five black robes obviously missed finding a single copy of the Federalist Papers, which were written by many of the Founders to explain to the American people how they envisioned the new government was to work. In addition, they apparently missed the collected writings of James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and George Washington, just to mention a very few. It’s obvious because otherwise, there is simply no way they could have reached this decision.

So, in a five to four vote, the Supreme Court said that it was okay for a community to use eminent domain to take land, shut down a business, or destroy and reorganize an entire neighborhood, if it benefited the community in a positive way. Specifically, “positive” meant unquestioned government control and more tax dollars.

The Institute for Justice, the group that defended Susette Kelo before the Supreme Court, reported that it found 10,000 cases in which condemnation was used or threatened for the benefit of private developers. These cases were all within a five-year period after the Kelo decision. Today, that figure is dwarfed as there is seemingly no limit on government takings of private property.

The Kelo decision changed the rules. The precedent was set. Land can now be taken anytime at the whim of a power elite. So again, the question must be asked: if Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court, will he stand to protect private property rights against massive overreach by local, state, and federal governments? Will he support an effort to overturn the Kelo Decision?

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It Matters How You Stand–“…expose the government’s war on ranchers…”

by Tom DeWeese

Justice has finally been achieved as the federal government’s war against western ranchers and property owners has taken a second major hit.

First, Cliven Bundy and his sons, Ryan, Ammon, Dave and Mel, were released in January, 2018, after three trials that never found them guilty of a crime, yet they spent close to two years behind federal bars, while being physically tortured and abused by cheating and lying Bureau of Land Management (BLM) thugs. As they were forced into solitary confinement, subjected to daily body searches, and other physical abuses, they were labeled by the government and mainstream media to be nothing more than paranoid right-wing loons.

Finally, a judge found that it was the BLM which was dangerous, guilty of perpetrating violence and spreading lies in an attempt to take control of the Bundy Nevada land that had been in the family’s possession since the 1880s. The BLM started the range war against the Bundys, claiming that Bundy cattle were a danger to the desert tortoise. And so, as the BLM openly bragged about roughing up Dave Bundy, grinding his face into the ground, they confiscated the cattle from land on which the Bundys had legal grazing rights dating back one hundred years.

Meanwhile, in Southwest Oregon, Dwight and Steven Hammond, also multi-generation cattle ranchers, were imprisoned for allowing a routine controlled-burn fire to leak onto a small portion of neighboring public grazing land. It’s a standard practice by ranchers to use the burns to keep down weeds and debris that would feed large forest fires. It also helps keep burnables away from ranch buildings. In short, its just good land management. The forest service does it too. In fact, the accidental spread of the Hammond fire onto federal land surely helped improve government land.

The federal government worked to throw the book at the Hammonds, charging them with intentionally and maliciously setting fires on public lands. The Department of Justice actually charged Steven Hammond with lighting the fire to cover an illegal deer hunt on land that was managed by the BLM. It filed a civil suit that cost the Hammonds over $400,000. Meanwhile the government vigorously worked to prosecute the Hammonds to put them behind bars.

Yet the Jury acquitted them on most of the charges and U.S. District Judge Michael Hogan, considering the fact that the Hammonds were upstanding citizens, decided that the usual minimum sentence of five years was too harsh for the supposed crime. Thus, Dwight Hammond received only three months and his son Steven was sentenced to a year and a day. They served that time and returned home to their ranch in Diamond, Oregon.

The Obama Justice Department actually accused the Hammonds of terrorism and demanded more time be served, so prosecutors filed an appeal to overturn Judge Hogan’s lighter sentence. As a result the Hammonds were forced back into jail to complete the full five years.

This injustice by the federal judicial system is what forced other ranchers, including the Bundys, to travel to Burns, Oregon in January 2016 to occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The point was to expose the government’s war on ranchers, of which the Hammonds were the latest victims of this massive government overreach.

Once again, the government reacted with massive firepower. This time, as several of the protestors were on their way to a public meeting to explain their purpose and try to work out some sort of solution, federal and state agents arrested Ammon Bundy in a road block. Meanwhile, officials forced the car carrying rancher and protest leader LaVoy Finicum, off the road, into a trap. As LaVoy exited the car with his hands up in an attempt to protect the others still in the car, state police and FBI officers opened fire and killed LaVoy Finicum as they claimed he was going for a gun. Video has proven he was not. His wife, Jannette Finicum has now filed a wrongful death lawsuit.

For decades, ranchers across the American West have endured such intimidation and lawlessness by the federal government. Finally, some of their strong, independent neighbors said enough is enough. All they desire is to live in peace as good stewards of the land. And so, against all odds, they took a stand against the powerful government forces. Frankly, the outcome seemed hopeless. How does an individual gain justice in a rigged system that controls the court rooms and the media?

But a new battle cry is being heard as more and more Americans are beginning to see through the government smokescreen of intimidation and persecution. The Bundys and the Hammonds have led a renewed battle for the very issue that built this nation’s freedom and prosperity –the right to own and control private property.

On Tuesday, July 10, 2018, President Donald Trump fully pardoned Dwight and Steven Hammond and they too are headed home. They and the Bundys endured oppression from an out of control American government unlike anything we could have imagined existed in our nation. They fought an unwavering battle for freedom. And they have won. Now the American public must honor their sacrifice by demanding a full investigation into the lawless behavior of the BLM and U.S. Forest Service. American ranchers must never again be subjected to the tyranny endured by the Bundys and the Hammonds. As LaVoy Finicum once said, “It matters how you stand!”

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A Challenge to The American Planning Association-

“…it’s interesting to note that the American Planning Association is part of the Planners Network.”

by Tom DeWeese

In nearly every community of the nation the policy called Sustainable is the catch-all term for local planning programs, from water and energy controls to building codes and traffic planning. The term “sustainable” was first used in the 1987 report called “Our Common Future,’ issued by the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development (UNCED). The term appeared in full force in 1992 in a United Nations initiative called Agenda 21.

According to proponents, the official definition of Sustainable Development is “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” In 1993, the UN further described its purpose, saying, “Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced.” The most often used phrase to describe Sustainable policy is that it’s a “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society.”

These are strong pronouncements concerning our future. How could such ideas be imposed? Who could coordinate such an effort to reorganize our entire society? There are many private non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and government agencies involved in creating and implementing the national sustainable policy program on the state and local levels. But there is one that seems to stand in the center of them all.

The American Planning Association (APA) is the premier planning group operating across the nation. It has a long history in the development process, thus is trusted by elected officials to be a responsible force as they spread the gospel of “common sense” community planning to assure healthy, happy neighborhoods from which all may benefit. Above all, the APA strenuously denies any connection to the United Nations or any silly conspiracy theories like the so-called Agenda 21! Everything the APA promotes, they assure us, is based on local input for local solutions to local development planning. Here is a solid group you can trust!

So, it’s interesting to note that the American Planning Association is part of the Planners Network. The network is officially run by a group called the Organization of Progressive Planners. According to the Network’s website, it’s “an association of professionals, activists, academics, and students involved in physical, social, economic, and environmental planning in urban and rural areas, who promote fundamental change in our political and economic systems.”

On a visit to the website PlannersNetwork.org, one will find in its Statement of Principles this quote: “We believe planning should be a tool for allocating resources…and eliminating the great inequalities of wealth and power in our society … because the free market has proven incapable of doing this.”

That statement is advocating redistribution of wealth, social justice and even aspects of psychological manipulation, also called social engineering. That, then, is what nearly every planning group in nearly every community advocate in their planning programs. It is clearly the official policy of the American Planning Association. Still the APA insists that its planning has nothing to do with Agenda 21, even though APA’s planning goals are the exact goals of Agenda 21, and its undated version called the 2030Agenda.

Tactics used by the American Planning Association

Okay, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. How do planning groups like the APA really control opinions and gain support for their planning ideas? How do they overcome the fears as they impose plans that destroy private property and change the entire structure of the community?

Here’s a recent example:

A few years ago, with great fanfare, the American Planning Association (APA) reported results of a survey the group had conducted, “Planning America: Perceptions and Priorities,” showing that the anti-Agenda 21 “crowd is slim.” Said the report, only 6% of those surveyed expressed opposition to Agenda 21, while 9% expressed support for Agenda 21 and 85%, “the vast majority of respondents, don’t know about Agenda 21/2030.”

Typically, APA is using the survey to formulate the image that opponents to Agenda 21/Sustainable Development are just a lunatic fringe with no standing and of no consequence in the “real” world. They continue to portray Agenda 21 as simply a 20- year-old idea, and just a suggestion that planners and local governments might consider.

However, a closer look at the full survey, plus additional APA reports reveal some interesting and, in some cases, astounding facts.

First the survey:

It was designed to show public support for “Planning.” This has become an obsession with the “planning community” because of the growing opposition to Agenda 21 and Sustainable Development.

According to the APA, the findings of the Survey reveal that: only one-third believe their communities are doing enough to address economic situations; it says that very few Americans believe that market forces alone (the free market) improve the economy or encourage job growth; 84 % feel that their community is getting worse or staying the same; community planning is seen as needed by a wide majority of all demographics.

Those are pretty astounding findings. It looks like these “honest” planners have their fingers on the pulse of the nation. Well, not so fast. Let’s look at the actual questions the APA asked to get these results.

For example, Finding #4: Community planning is seen as needed by a wide majority of all demographics (79% agree; 9% disagree; and 12% don’t know). Wow!

But here is the actual question that was asked: “Generally, do you agree or disagree that your community could benefit from a community plan as defined above?” The definition provided in order to answer the question was this: “Community planning is a process that seeks to engage all members of a community to create more prosperous, convenient, equitable, healthy and attractive places for present and future generations.”

Asking the question in that manner is akin to holding up a picture of a rent-a-wreck car, along side one of a Ferrari and asking which one would they want to drive. Give me the pretty one please – say 79%. In fact, in some actual planning meetings they do just that – hold up a picture of the downtown area depicting decaying, dreary buildings versus one of a shining, beautiful utopia, and they literally say, “which one do you want?” If the answer is (of course) the pretty one, then, YES, the community supports planning!

It’s obvious that the APA is playing word games with its surveys and definitions of planning. No wonder such an overwhelming majority answer in the affirmative to such questions. And, yes, maybe a lot of Americans don’t know what Agenda 21 really is. However, if the APA asked real questions that gave a solid clue as to the planning they actually have in mind, it’s fairly certain they would get a much different response – whether the person answering had ever heard of Agenda 21 or not.

For example, listed below are some sample questions that could help the APA take the real pulse of the community – if they wanted to be honest. I challenge the American Planning Association to ask

THESE questions in their next survey:

10 Real Questions Planners Should Ask the Public

1. How do the citizens feel about planning policy that forces them to move from their single- family homes with the garage for the car/s and a backyard for the kids to play with the neighbor kids? Do they want to live in a high-rise where they have to take their kids down 12 flights of stairs and walk to the designated play park? Do they still support such “Planning?”

2. How do the citizens feel about planning with a goal to eventually ban cars? This will be accomplished by planning programs that will narrow or eliminate roads, making it harder to drive cars, then eliminates parking spaces, then forces cars to “share the road” with bicycles and foot traffic as regulations are put in place to make it illegal to even pass this slower traffic? Do they still support such “Planning?”

3. How do the citizens feel about planning that enforces the creation of light- rail public transportation with a limited number of riders – yet cost overruns could triple or quadruple their taxes so much that it would literally be cheaper to buy each potential rider a brand new Rolls Royce, and even throw in a chauffeur for good measure? Do they want to live without a car that would take them wherever they want to go, be it the grocery or the beach, on their schedule instead of a government created train or bus schedule? Do they still support such “Planning?”

4. How do the citizens feel about planning with today’s mandatory smart meters that can overcharge users by 284%? What if such planning forced you to buy all new appliances which can be controlled and even turned off by the utility company without warning – all to enforce energy-use levels as required by arbitrary and unsubstantiated “planning standards,” Do they still support such “Planning?”

5. How do the citizens feel about planning that forces taxpayers to pay for plug-in stations for electric cars that hardly anyone wants or uses, for the specific purpose of eventually forcing people to buy electric cars? Do they still support such “Planning?”

6. How do the citizens feel about planning that creates non-elected boards, councils, and regional governments to enforce their UN-inspired policies, which actually diminish (if not eliminate) the power of the local officials they elected, severely reducing citizen input into policy? Do they still support such “Planning?”

7. How do the citizens feel about planning that forces all housing to conform to specific government design, including projects of multi-family buildings that are forced into their neighborhoods, resulting in the reduction of property values and freedom of choice as to where and how each may live? Do they still support such “Planning?”

8. How do the citizens feel about planning that enforces international building codes and international electrical and plumbing codes designed to require major retrofitting in existing and new buildings to comply, including enforcing every building to look alike, have the same setbacks and even the same trees and shrubs. The result is the creation of a one size fits all society, ignoring local needs and desires of the residents? Do they still support “Planning?”

9. How do the citizens feel about planning that forces rental property owners and landlords to take in tenants that can’t afford their properties, so that they are forced to accept far less income for their investment, which will mean they cannot afford to maintain the property and earn their living, thereby destroying the rental industry and reducing housing choices? Do they still support “Planning?”

10. How do the citizens feel about planning that uses the power of eminent domain to take property and destroy small, locally owned businesses from lower income and ethnic neighborhoods, forcing the former residents into federal housing programs where their only option is to rent rather than having the chance to build equity and personal wealth through home ownership in the American Dream? Do they still have compassion for such “Planning?”

These are the realities of Sustainable Development planning programs, usually under the term Smart Growth. These policies are taking over local governments across the nation and the victims are mounting. Yet the planners ignore these results as they get fat off the federal grants that enforce the Sustainable plans.

Challenge the American Planning Association to stop whitewashing their plans into sounding like innocent, non-intrusive local ideas for community development. Ask the questions so that they reflect the real consequences of the plans, and then see if the 85% now are so eager to ignore the effects of Sustainable Development. The number one truth about the Sustainable policies that the APA imposes on every community is that none of it is LOCAL!

There is only one right approach for a community to come together to discuss and solve common problems: open discussion, honest debates and votes, and above all, a full concentration on the protection of private property rights as the ultimate decider.

This article is taken from information included in Tom DeWeese’s new book, “Sustainable, The WAR on Free Enterprise, Private Property, and Individuals.” Book details and ordering may be found at www.sustainabledevelopment.com

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Sustainable Development-Code for Reorganizing Human Society

by Tom DeWeese

It’s in every community in the nation. We hear it talked about in county commission meetings and state legislatures. It’s even used in advertising as a positive practice for food processing and auto sales. It’s used as the model for building materials, power sources and transportation policy. It’s sold as the bold visionary plan for the future. The nation is being transformed under the banner of “Sustainable Development.”

We are assured by elected officials that Sustainable Development is simply a tool or a guideline to help direct the carefully-planned growth of our cities and rural areas while protecting our natural resources for future generations. “We must guard against a chaotic, unregulated growth in our cities,” say its earnest proponents as they sell the concept through familiar, non-threatening words and beautiful pictures.

Citizens are assured by their community leaders that all such plans are just local, local, local, created with the participation of the whole community. Sustainable Development policy, they say, is just an environmental land conservation policy, a sensible development policy. Sustainable…what’s wrong with that?

As usual, the answers are hidden in the details. Are we hearing the truth? What are the consequences of the policy that has taken over every level of government? Are there hidden dangers most just can’t see? Or, as its proponents claim, is opposition to Sustainable Development really just a silly, overblown conspiracy theory found in a twenty-year-old meaningless document called Agenda 21?

The UN’s Brundtland Commission on Global Governance described Sustainable Development as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future.” It’s just common sense to assure we don’t overuse our resources, say proponents. If everyone will do their part, we can achieve total sustainability.

A couple of years later, in 1992, at the UN’s Earth Summit, 50,000 delegates approved a plan describing in great detail how to meet those future needs. They issued a document called Agenda 21, which the UN labeled as a “comprehensive blueprint for the reorganization of human society.” The UN sold Agenda 21 as a “soft law” policy, meaning it was an idea that nations would need to take up and impose through their own mechanisms.

To that end, in 1993, newly elected President Bill Clinton created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. Serving on the Council were the representative of nearly every federal agency, along with representatives of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) who had helped to write Agenda 21 on the international level. Also on the Council were representatives of major global corporations. Their task was to create the policies to turn the Agenda 21 goals into official government policy and provide the means to fund it.

The President’s Council released a report describing its Sustainable Development goals, saying, “Sustainable communities encourage people to work together to create healthy communities where natural resources and historic resources are preserved, jobs are available, sprawl is contained, neighborhoods are secure, education is lifelong, transportation and health care is accessible, and all citizens have opportunities to improve the quality of their lives.”

It all sounds pretty neat. Nothing to fear here! It sounds like Utopia is truly ours for the taking. Again, what are the details? How do we put such ideas into action? What are the consequences? Is the environment better off? Are we better off? Well, let’s take each of these glowing ideas one at a time and just see where it all leads! CONTINUEREADING